Reeevaaaaaamp!

Hello Captains!

So, after many discussions (and many nerf gun battles) I have taken on the mantle of Captain Dev!
This is something I'm very excited for, as I feel the Captain has a great deal of potential available to try and make the class really shine in its chosen roles. There's quite a lot I like about the Captain and what it has to offer.

Now, I've noticed there's a very nicely written thread already going on suggestions for the Captain Dev, with some very good suggestions already included. At this time though, I'd like to have the discussion move over into here, where we can attempt to focus it a little bit more.

Please keep in mind a few things:

Let's try to keep this restricted to the top 3 things about the class you'd like to see change. These changes can be as large or small as you'd like -- everything is up for discussion at this point in time.

Please try to give me the 'why' you think something should change. As an example, just telling me 'my DPS is too low' isn't as helpful as 'my DPS is low because my key DPS skills don't seem to progress well from 65-85, or I only have a limited DPS rotation when I don't have a defeat event active'

Let's try to keep this constructive. Flaming will do you, and the class, absolutely no good.

I want a continuation of Raskolnikov's vision, exemplified in these quotes taken from the RoI Captain dev diary:

Envoyé par Raskolnikov

To me, the buffing “role” of the Captain is inherently part of the class and shouldn’t be restricted to any one trait line.

Envoyé par Raskolnikov

Captains are pretty much the hybrid class in LotRO. They can deal some damage, they can heal some morale, and they can tank a bit. However, it’s their buffing “role” which draws most players to the Captain.

I just don't wanna see us end up/go back to being like LMs in that they trait for their main role of debuffing in raids or go home (Ancient Master). Only time LMs get to trait out of AM in raids is for when there are multiple LMs or in special circumstances where the raid decides to eschew defense for more offense. See LM debuffs are by-and-large defensive in nature, preventing damage. We, however, bring a lot of offensive buffs to the table, and offensive measures are popular in raids from first-time boss-kills to farm-mode raids, i.e. basically always unless specific mechanics punish you for doing too much damage.

Thankfully we bring our buffs to the table without a lot of trait investment. EDIT: Essentially, we get to make fun, tactical decisions on our build based on the fight without having our decision made for us by having a buff-trait line that we must go deep into. Please keep it like that.

The tanking aspect of captain needs a good solid look. It has two major problems (along with a few small ones). Power management in tank line is terrible. Single target aggro is solid but AoE aggro is lacking, especially due to our force taunt only being 4 targets on a 45 sec cooldown (so if we lose it, we may have no way to snap it back), and we have no aggro leech or copy skill. It also doesn't help that our other force taunt is also needed to give us our Aggressive Stance buff, so we need to choose between one or the other.

LIs also have a couple of glaring issues. The two big ones are swap LIs and our legacies on our emblems.Swap LIs: Swapping LIs for buffs is boring and annoying. No captain can go without these buffs (+Relentless Attack, for example) but due to their nature as a 30min buff they're not worth putting on our actual weapons. These bonuses should just roll into the actual buffs. (For the record, I don't have as much of a problem with the swap emblems for things like Strength of Will, though that's still kinda boring.)Emblem legacies: This may not appear to be a problem at first, but our healing legacies are too good. No matter how we're traited, we always go with the heal legacies because they're so good and the rest are so bad. It enables us to heal super-effectively even if we're traited DPS, which is supposed to be giving up some heals for damage (and extra defeat responses). It essentially means there's no real reason to ever go HoH since our healing is just about as good in DPS mode. There should be a choice involved (between more Rallying Cries that heal for less and more damage, or a big boost to our heals with lower DPS) and these legacies aren't making us choose. Should be a simple fix, just roll a couple of the legacies into blue line/HoH capstone and give us a couple of DPS or aggro legacies instead.

The last big issue I have is Heralds. Even using a Brother skill on the herald, your total DPS and survivability goes down. There should be an even tradeoff where the bonuses from the heralds make up for not having a banner, but there aren't. DPS is too low and they're entirely too squishy for most captains to even use them over a banner when soloing, to say nothing of grouping.

I have a couple other issues (DPS should be low but not as low as it is, Now For Wrath being a required trait even when traiting yellow or red, Kick and Routing Cry are stupid) but I'll let others go into those since you wanted our top three and I'm sure others will hit on those items.

I also agree with Omen that our buffing role should stay independent of any trait line.

When I created a captain, I thought I would love the class. I wanted something that was like a champion or guardian but could heal a bit and most importantly res another player as well as call another player to myself.

However, I found that there was just something about the captain that didn't meet my expectations. Now, my captain is just level 25 so I don't have all of the skills or heralds that higher level players have. However, these three things are what annoy me most *AT LEVEL 25* and my proposals for changes, based upon my initial impression of the class. I'm not sure if I'm really qualified to make these proposals, having such a low level captain, but here they are anyway:

1. An AOE melee skill that would hit 3+ targets. I see this skill being on the line of the Guardian's Sweeping Cut. Maybe there could be two AoE melee skills, and the more powerful skill could rely upon a defeat response to activate (sort of like how the Guardian's Retaliation needs a parry). I don't think that the Captain should ever feel like a Champion, but there should definitely be more AoE.
1a. If Captains can't have more melee AoE, then maybe make the heralds do more damage?
2. Please make the Captain DPS a little better. It often feels like I am bludgeoning enemies to death with a board, not cutting through them with a blade.
3. Better in-combat power regeneration OR reduced power costs on skills. It's not fun to run out of power in the middle of a fight (although this might be just my playstyle; I'm very button mashy)

Heralds, on the other hand... maybe they seem inferior when standing next to a captain (they totally are), but I can't think of any captain who takes a herald to a raid and that is sad. It's as though every captain says, "Go on home, now... but leave the flag." I don't know how to fix that but clearly heralds need a little love.

Once heralds are awesome, they will need to look awesome too. I mean, peon-wear is nice and all, but it is little wonder they have such an inferiority complex. I mean, have you SEEN my captain's outfit? It is well buffed, super shiny, high end armour that is so awe-inspiring, my whole raid performs better. Next to that, no herald scruffies can possibly compare.

Townsperson says, "I'm having an adventure. I've paddled all the way from Frogmorton!"

1) The best armor bonuses (- defeat event cooldown) not gated behind PvP. Having 3 (2 after U10) pieces of the Perseverance set is almost required to be a good captain. Plus, having pretty much completed my blue-line build, I am aiming for a red-line defeat response build, which would benefit considerably from this set. I'm not VIP and I don't like PvP anyway.

2) Crafted teal shields for captain healing and tanking. Why aren't there any? Why make us get very very lucky (skirms, teal Warg-trainer's) just so we can wear a shield with stats appropriate for our class? Give us crafted shields and let us upgrade if we get lucky in instances/raids.

3) No armor swapping. I'm specifically looking at having to carry around 5 (4) pieces of the Tognir set just to be a good captain. Suggestion: roll the +tact mit bonus into an improved skill "Improved Motivating Speech" earned at say, 64, or 74. Carrying around a red-line set and a blue-line set is fine. Carrying around more for specific skill usage is just unwieldy.

4) While we're on armor sets, remove the client lag when changing equipment.

A spaceship from another star / They ask me where all the people are
I tell them I'm the only one / There was a war, but I must have won

Once heralds are awesome, they will need to look awesome too. I mean, peon-wear is nice and all, but it is little wonder they have such an inferiority complex. I mean, have you SEEN my captain's outfit? It is well buffed, super shiny, high end armour that is so awe-inspiring, my whole raid performs better. Next to that, no herald scruffies can possibly compare.

I definitely agree with this! There need to be more outfits and appearances for the heralds. I was really surprised that they didn't make a Rohirric herald with RoR. After all, they made a Rohirric skirmish soldier.

First, thanks for taking the time to listen to our ideas. Since you wanted to roll all the suggestions into one place, I'll put a link to Thoronthor's excellent suggestions here: http://forums.lotro.com/newreply.php...eply&p=6650914. I very much liked all of his ideas. I agree that I like being a hybrid class - I don't run HoH because I don't want to be a healer, I want to be a captain. I like that even when running with a rainbow build, I can heal pretty well. (DPS is another story, of course.) If I had to pick only three, they would be:

Cry of Vengeance - One thing that makes captains useful is our in-combat rezzes; however, I often don't even count this one because it can be so hit and miss. Extending the radius of it and increasing the time we have to fire it off would be great.

Buffsticks - It would be awesome if we could do away with these. I second his suggestions for rolling up the legacies - add finesse to Crit and Outgoing Healing to Focus.

Words of Courage - I agree with Thor that this could be made into a much better heal - more up-front healing and reduce the hit to our morale.

Top three on my wishlist

First of all, welcome RockX, the captain dev mantle suits you well (I hope so at least ) I'm exited for the upcoming revamp; so without further stalling, here's my top three on changes I'd suggest:

#1 Enhance on the tanking role. Guardings and Wardens deserve their main tank spot and neither do I envy them nor do I want to start any rivalries. But while our yellow trait line does allow for some tanking, it is still mainly limited to 3-man or duo content. I'd love to see the captain become a viable tank for 6-mans and a better off-tank in general. Right now I can generate more aggro by traiting blue and going full-out on healing. My suggestion is to remove the "buffing" kind of traits from the yellow line (To arms duration, victory banner...) and give us some new traits that help our aggro management. +5 To Arms duration could simply be included into the basic skill (yes I'm asking for a little favor here I know...)

#2 What about a new buff? There hasn't been one since we got to level 50... and buffing & supporting is the true heart of the captain class, imho. Maybe alternatives to Motivating Speech.... I can see things like Empowering Speech (adds to max power instead of morale) or Rousing Speech (adds to outgoing damage and healing). These buffs could act along the lines of our Tactics buffs, so they'd be exclusive to each other ("You can only have one speech effect on you at a time"). And while you're at it....what about our legendary buff, IDOME? I say, scrap it and make it a passive. Let's think of a _true_ legendary buff skill. Something that speaks to every affected class individually, like the Minstrel's Call To Greatness does. I hope you can see where I'm going.

#3 New skills are always great and exiting. Except if they aren't and they suck. Let's tackle a few underused and somewhat useless skills. I'm looking at you, Withdraw. And for some part also Time of Need. What I would love to see is an enhance on our small skill chain and passing throug battle-readied as well as battle-hardened states. There could be more alternatives to the skills triggering these stats. What about an insta-cast heal skill that requires battle-readied and opens up Blade of Elendil (being an alternative to Pressing and Devastating Attack). Maybe a melee alternative to Battle Shout that shares its cooldown? So many possibilities out there....

These are my thoughts on my beloved and favorite Lotro class. Remember, RockX...with great dev power comes great responsibility!

In other words: If you don't return In Harms Way to 100% damage absorb it's gonna get ugly.

1) Tanking. I love that we have a trait line for it, and I have fun doing it. However, the Leader of Men trait line just feels disconnected and weird. When Rask revamped it, I feel like (for whatever reason, probably just time constraints) he only took it half way. It's got odd utility traits and set bonuses mixed in with the tanking stuff. It's not bad, but it's not synergistic. I don't feel like I'm building up toward something coherent when picking my LoM traits. Not like LtC/HoH where everything reinforces one main theme.

2) Legendary Traits. Specifically, I have bones to pick with IDOME and Fellowship-Brother. Questions of strength aside, my main issue with them is philosophical. They're both mechanically strong but boring. They don't create gameplay. Oathbreakers create gameplay; people see those lovely blue ghosts pop up, and they know that it's time to unload everything they have. It's super cool. If nothing else, it gives me something to yell out in raid chat. SotD doesn't have quite as much visual impact, but it's still something we think about using, something that keeps us engaged in the fight and watching what's going on so we know when and where to apply it. Legendary traits need to feel like that.

3) LI Legacies. I hate buffsticks, and I've probably wasted enough words on them over the years. Similar to my point above on legendary traits, they're just not fun. Buffsticks are tedious bookkeeping, not gameplay. But there's more to our LI situation than just that. It's easy to build a healing emblem. But a DPS emblem? Tanking emblem? Those come down to relic choices, not legacy choices. We don't even have tanking legacies, for one thing; I mean, sure, Defensive Strike Armour Buff, but that's really it. No threat legacies, which we really need. No other survivability legacies. As for DPS, we do have some decent legacies on our weapons, but nothing on our emblems. Probably by design, but I think all of us would like the option to build different kinds of weapons and emblems instead of being pigeonholed to only having DPS weapons and only having healing emblems.

There are dozens of other things I could probably think of, too, but for me these are the three main ones.

Really, though, if I could give just one single piece of advice, it would be this: Whenever we make a build choice, that choice needs to create new gameplay, not just make numbers get bigger. The problem with passive numerical bonuses is that, no matter how much effort you put into balancing the numbers, eventually people will figure out which numbers are better than the other numbers, and then nobody will use the other numbers. But if you're adding gameplay rather than numbers, then it will almost always be valid to say, "Yes, the benefit from that gameplay is slightly better, but this gameplay is more fun/is easier for me to pull off/fits with my kinship's play style/etc. and provides almost as much benefit."

Cainwen Ciaphas, Captain of Crickhollow, HERO OF MIDDLE EARTH!!!
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered! My opinions are my own!

I think the recent change to Blade of Elendil was interesting and this should possibly be built upon - more active buffing in combat. There is plenty that can be done along these lines. One thing I would do first though is tidy up our static buffs.

IDOME just isn't legendary anymore - don't listen to anyone who tells you it is. It's buffs are very underwhelming and the range of the aura is far too short. Whilst we're on usefulness, Focus just isn't used enough - either improve it or just ditch it for something else. And whilst you're at it, remove the need for a buffing pole - the legacies for our buffs are a waste of an LI slot. Consolidate these buffs into the skills. I would also make all Shield-Brother skills work for the captain as well for call cap-stone legacies, no matter which you're using. Finally, shake up the traits. Remove the banner/herald improvements, the only one worth the slot is for the hope banner anyway. Move these buffs directly onto banners/heralds by default - they could use an update anyway. The traits can then be reconditioned for better uses. Finally - take the mark CD off the LoM trait-line - all marks to have no CD.

2. DPS

Now I'm not massively fussed about DPS my self, it isn't why I rolled a captain, but even I will concede that when levelling captains should be thrown a bone here. DPS across the board should be increased, but even more so in Lead The Charge. However, to compensate, as this would make LTC OP, nerf healing and make it only usable on the capt. Same for buffs. But note, this is a severe nerf, so the damage increase from LTC traits should be pretty significant.

I'd also change the Pressing Attack targets legacy and make it AOE targets and at the same time make Sure Strike base 3-targets with the LTC capt-stone. Notable base increases on the damage for Battle Shout and Routing Cry, plus 40m range for BS (non-trait increases). Finally - Shadows Lament - this has never felt like it did enough damage. In my opinion it should get about a 30-40% damage increase.

3. Tanking

Lastly, tanking really could use some improvements. This could include a threat stance, which would modify a number of our skills. Our biggest problems when tanking are AOE threat and survivability. I don't expect us to be as good as guards or wardens, but if you want to give us a tanking trait line, then it needs doing right. The stance could solve the threat issues - another skill or two needs to be AOE and all skills need to cause more threat. Throw in a reasonably strong morale bubble skill (say a 3K bubble with a 1.5min CD) and an additional base +5% incoming healing from Leader of Men cap-stone, and we could be getting somewhere.

I may even go as far as suggesting that Shield of The Dunedain should be usable on your self - I can see some people objecting here and can see why - but think about all the options guards and champs have (and warden self healing is immense) and it suddenly starts to look less radical than it sounds.

Lastly - I haven't mentioned healing as we're in a pretty good place, but one thing that really must happen in my opinion is for Words of Courage to have two changes. 1. Remove the morale cost. 2. Allow the HoT to stack.

Couple of random ideas I might not really have thought through properly.

To aid the soloing/levelling cappy

1. Would love to see an extra melee damaging-only skill with a short cd added at low level.
Cappy melee skills have fairly long cooldowns so sometimes there is no real choice for what button to press next. Playing solo while levelling/deeding or whatever can feel very slow.
I think this would help the flow of combat a bit and make it generally more interesting without really having any effect on a cappy's group roles.
It might also be interesting to reduce some melee skill cooldowns as part of red trait tree bonuses.

2. Add a self-buffing-only version of the Blade Brother versions of To Arms and Strength of Will (say, somewhere in the 20-30 level range maybe).
Have them switch back to the current versions of those skills when a Brother toggle is on, and have it not affected by Fellowship Brother, again it would be intended to improve solo DPS a bit without having any group effect.

Otherwise, if you are able to consolidate some of the healing legacies or do something with buffsticks, you might see if you can add a +targets for threatening skills legacy or a Shout Threat Up, or both. Maybe a small power leach on Noble Mark would be nice too.

Hey RockX. Firstly i'd like to agree with Omen, everything he said is spot on.

So your after some key points that we would like to see changed on cappies, heres my top 3:

1- Armour Sets. Echoing what Nakiami has already said, this one annoys me no end - The -20% cooldown on defeat events is the best bonus of any captain set. Its about to become a 2 piece bonus, and only available in the moors! It is as already said, almost mandatory, yet unavailable to those who are not VIP/dont like pvp. Why is THE BEST PVE set bonus only available via the moors?? I struggled not to go crazy and post this entire paragraph in caps tbh...

2 - Pets. Are rubbish, i mean really, they deal so little damage between 75-85 they are just not worth it at all. I dont know what the damage output is like at lower levels, but if it scales linearly then i assume it to be very bad. Also we have 2 red line traits that boost pets, these do not boost dps of pets to any meaningful value, meaning there are only actually 5 viable red traits that automatically get used when traiting dps. I would either remove pets completely, or really change the way captain pets work to make them viable.

3 - Tanking. The yellow trait line was changed some time ago from a buffing line to a tanking line, (A good change for the reasons Omen said in his post above) However cappies still have some problems with tanking. Not enough AoE threat is generated, makng it very hard to tank instances with lots of mobs per pull, The Morale pool can be quite low as well, making it hard to tank certain bosses. I think the best way to combat this would be to add 'something' to the yellow capstone that increases the AoE threat potential of cappies further, and adds more morale to boot.

1. First, do no harm. Captain is in a wonderful place. Break us and you break LOTRO!

2. Legacies need a pass. There are only must-haves and the scraps you use when you don't get enough pool A legacies. Buff sticks are annoying.

3. Armour set bonuses. When they're so strong they encourage gear swapping, something needs to be done. Roll some of the bonuses into the actual skill and make the bonuses smaller. And for Bilbo's sake, put the -defeat event cooldown on a PvE set.

That's all. I'm more worried that a revamp will make the Captain *less* fun, so the number of vowels and the presence of an exclamation point in your thread title is slightly terrifying.

quick link here to our "month of the captain" thread focusing on smaller changes we would like to see rather than any large overhauls.

1. Solo - I believe in our original vision of never leaving our buff roles, except for 1 problem. We are not always in a group. I have built this topic up here, but I will cut out a snipit here rather than rebuilding the premise.

Captains have been tethered and balanced upon the following equation - (captain power = Personal contribution + Group buffs). There is nothing wrong with this equation, and it is good that we are balanced this way, however there is one major flaw. If we are not in a group then our total power is cut in half. There are 2 notions expressed on these forums that are particularly telling in this regard.
1. Leveling a captain is slow and arduous, the dps is poor.
2. We are an alting class. Or in other words the captain only logs in when a group is made, then logged out after.

I would like to see some mechanic that allows us to rebalance that equation to accommodate being solo. Our current system, heralds, is insufficient, particularly in pvp where they can be perma cc'd. As a test I sent my loyalty traited OB herald after an afk reaver and he did 0 damage before dying to blood of fire, the reavers icmr was higher than my heralds dps, netting 0 damage. Further tests showed that the herald did 7dps and took 79% more damage than me, and his finesse is terrible.

2. Speed. I would like to see some of our non damaging skills become fast or instant. In particular our maintenance rotations. Mark, banner plant, strength of will, to arms, muster courage. We have to pop some of these before every pull. In pvp it's even more excruciating...for example when you get knocked off a horse your first steps are...

Muster courage 1.2.3, Mark 1.2.3, SOW 1.2.3, To arms, 1.2.3........Thats around 8 second while your taking damage and not giving any.
3. Charisma - LINK - I'm still in love with this concept. It gives the captain a dynamic effect on the group as the fight goes on, turning the group from despair to hope based on the charisma of the captain.

4. PvP. I think steps 1 (including link) and 2 would fix us for pvp without making us OP. There are very few captains that find success in solo pvp. You really have to beat everything out of the captain to get anywhere. A lot of players, including those in this peer reviewed hierarchy of the moors confirm that we are bottom of the barrel when it comes to solo pvp performance.

You've already gotten alot of good responses here, gonna add my thoughts, even tho they are the same as many others.

Let me just start by saying that I love the Captain class, and I think it's in a really good spot right now. However...

#1Heralds
Heralds needs to be seriously buffed. A significant buff of the two traits should do the trick. As it is now, they do way to little damage, and has no other real benefits. Get the damage up, and give them some cool skills!

#2Tanking
I don't tank much on my Captain, but I know the entire LoM line could use some work. Would love to see some (more) traits in there to help with our defense (Thinking Guardian's Stoic-trait here for example). Also, something to help with power-issues.

#3Buffsticks and Emblems
The problem with removing the buffsticks and emblems are ofcourse, where do you draw the line? Getting an Improved Motivating Speech at level 50 to get 10% instead of 5% would work, and just remove the legacy. Tactics could just be rolled into the skill. Strength of Will and Time of Need? Well, I'm pretty sure I've never seen anyone with the ToN legacies on their Main Emblem, but it's a skill not used often anyway (atleast not by me), while Strength of Will should be used exactly every two minutes. I say make SoW a toggle, and get rid of the legacy (but make sure it's got a pretty big range).

Whatever you do RockX, don't do too much, it's a lovely class, and in a good spot, so please don't ruin it :P

* I'd like another defeat event. Part of the reason for rally cry spam'ing is there's nothing else to do with defeat events. Bosses don't get stunned (routing cry). Preferably the defeat event is a buff of some sort. I'd suggest mitigation of some sort... Giving us the choice to buff damage or defense or maybe both.

* Tanking (or at least threat generation) feels very cludged and patched, at least in my opinion. Taunts and extra threat got added on to stuff that had a purpose before tanking. (routing cry, grave wound). Noble Mark is the only thing that works well, in my opinion.

* I'd like some healing improvements. Our "spammable" heal 'fear no darkness' (FnD) really hasn't scaled well. Right now it'll heal less than 1/20 of a tank's max hp, so there's really not much point casting it on a tank. And if the basic aoe attack coming in is going to hit a "squishy" class for 2000 damage, it'd be nice if we could heal at least half of that without critting. But to that end... simply letting the HoTs on FnD stack would probably accomplish quite a bit without us taking mini/rk spots.

--
Keep in mind while bringing one captain to a fellowship is amazing, bringing a second is not. Our buffs and marks don't stack. So the problem of "why not just bring 12 captains" is not really a problem.

- buffsticks bad: roll buff legacies into their skills
- I need six majors on an emblem. Okay, fine, at least four, but I'll whine about switching emblems for SoW, and VS can just deal with it. The major lottery sucks.
- Weapon needs more (any) healing legacies

A spaceship from another star / They ask me where all the people are
I tell them I'm the only one / There was a war, but I must have won

1) I have to echo previous comments on the buff stick and having to maintain and swap to a second legendary item being annoying. Then, the only value to having a 2nd/1st age as the buff stick is a teeny-tiny bonus. If we're going to keep this mechanic, give us a reason to be refreshing the weapon. Allow these legacies to go to a very high level (like the stat legacies) so that we can actually use the legendary points across the 3 buff legacies that we put on the buff stick.

2) Heralds are entirely too squishy. Even in the mid 50s they are already squishy in places like the Forgotten Treasury, such that it's better to have the banner out. The relative bonus just really isn't worth it either... so some more balance needs to be had on this mechanic.

3) Healing improvement. Disclaimor: I am the healing captain in a group of 6. There is no RK or Mini in the group, just 2 captains and I'm the primary healer. Having something (even longer CD) to act in an emergency would be nice. or DuneBug's comments about stacking the HoTs on FnD.

p.s. Having soloed from 1-48, I don't find the DPS to be all that bad. Increased playing speed is always nice, but this is not a Champion and when I want to just go mow things down, I'll go to my RK or Hunter. The current situation, even solo, forces you to learn to rely a bit on others (your herald in the case of playing solo), and that's not entirely bad.

Allow for specialized roles while retaining the option for a solid hybrid role.
It was very worrying to read in the last Twitter dev chat that one goal for the class revamps is to “reduce the hybrid-homogenized nature of our classes.” The main reason that I love the captain is the ability to fill in multiple secondary roles within a group. It is a fun and challenging dynamic that makes the captain really stand out. While it would be really cool to have the option to specialize in one role, I greatly hope that with these major revisions and the new trait “trees,” it will remain possible to build for a hybrid role: diminished abilities of each role that become powerful when brought together. All I ask is that you keep this in mind as you do your magic on our amazing class!

Reduce skill animations and delay times.
I think that the biggest help that you can give our class, rather than just bumping up raw numbers, is to simply speed things up! Many animations and pauses can be dreadfully long and take away a bit of the excitement as we twiddle our thumbs waiting for skills to execute. There are so many different things for the captain to do, but often we fail at our job not because we don't have the skill to succeed, but because the long durations can make failure inevitable. Success and failure should be purely based upon our skill to react quickly and effectively, and I think the system should allow for that!

Improve captain soloability.
While grouping is a huge part of our class, we should definitely still have some solid abilities when we choose to fly solo! While I think that the above suggestion would go far in that, there's still a bit more that I think can be done. One really simple yet effective change would be to allow Shadow's Lament to apply the Battle-readied state regardless of BPE. Since our big DPS skills are gated behind and rely upon the success of this skill, missing it even once can be a major blow. Other than that, I'm pretty content with how things are! I definitely like how challenging it can be and would rather have it like this than make it into a faceroll.

1. We need four (or more) legendary items just to perform our basic functions? I had to spend real money beyond any other class I play to purchase more legendary item slots just to function. Why would I like to see legacies consolidated or functionality moved to a better place? Because there is a $$ surcharge to playing a captain, and a real loss of IXP since with five legacy slots occupied by non-leveling items, only one, plus an extra purchased one, are gaining XP. Other classes (my burg, my guard, my minstrel) all have two maxed items, and four items gaining XP at the multiplied rate. This means less IXP, fewer relics, fewer resources, just for basic functionality.

Another "why" would be the taking up of skill slots to swap buff sticks and CD items, and inventory slots for buff sticks and heal sticks and CD items. Four legendary items on my skill bars, three banners, one herald skill, different skills depending which "stance" I'm in (different shield brothers and their attendant skills are effectively stances after all).

2. Power use in tanking role. Yes, I know power is changing with Update 10. However in Beta 4, my captain, using the same rotation I use tanking Io's Peak, the easiest three-man instance, runs out of power completely in under two minutes (yes, bug reported). When tanking, logically I should be using the morale banner, not the power banner; I should want more morale, rather than less. I should logically have traits slotted for survival, self heals, defense, not weakening myself for power. BTW, this is with a fate/ICPR heavy build, and eating the best ICPR food.

3. AoE threat please. Why? Because the AoE skills we currently have (two) have lengthy cooldowns, and one doesn't build threat, but is a force taunt.

In summary, I'd like captanking to be enjoyable/fun/involve choice. It already almost is, hence why I do it (I also have a guard). But it's a chore to level up four legendary items, have non-stop power issues, and be totally restricted in skill use to this, threat mark, threat skill, DoT w/threat enhancement, wait for cooldowns.

If somebody in group crits, sorry, can't do anything about pulling that MOB back at all until CD expires. OK, now I can use ONE skill off CD to see if it'll grab it back, sorry, nope. Meanwhile, I'm desperately using other skills to try to at least provide damage threat so I don't get further behind. Sorry, out of power. Don't worry, I'll rez, at least defeated they are off the threat table now...? ...really? That's how the mechanic is supposed to work? ;-)

1: Legacies. Right now there is a severe lack of 'good' dps legacies. Remove the legacies that increase our buffs. Just gives our buffs a 'buff' and leave them. Add in more +x% damage legacies and maybe a -CD on some of our dps skills(that would also fit nicely in our red trait line).

2: Traits: The healing line feels good to me as it is. Another heal skill would be nice but the trait part of it is good. The yellow line could use some more AOE taunts as well has anything that could help us hold aggro but not feel like a Guard or Waden. The red line focuses to much on our heralds imo, more buffs to our skills would be huge.

3: Scale the buff of our 'Brother' skills. They go up very little from when we get them to 85.

1. And most important: Please get rid of Buffsticks. I hate buffsticks (and item swapping in general). It's illogical and an annoyance after each rise of the level cap. No other class needs as many legendary items as the captain, to maximize its potential in instances and raids. My suggestion: Get rid of all legacies, that empower buffs. And since these Buffs are mandatory for the captains class, add their value (or a part of it) to the skills.

2. Ok, many captains will hate me for this: Please get rid of that mandatory 30Minutes Buffs, the captain hast to cast all the time on himself, in groups, in instances and raids. Two reasons: First, because it takes the dynamic out of the game. I've done it thousands of times and I'm pretty annoyed by now. The whole group hast to wait all the time. (even worse in random groups). And second: There is no connection between the caster and the enchanted. In most cases, you cast your buff and don't think about it for the next 30 Minutes. I'm a much bigger fan of those Buffs, that become activated through active skills (not IDOME; I'm not a big fan of auras, since its the same problem: you just activate it and ignore it afterwards). An easier alternative suggestion: Disable the animations for most of the buffs (like some of them are on a horse). This would fasten up the procedure enormously.

3. Heralds and Archers are uninteresting and weak in Endgame. I liked running around with my herald on lower levels. He felt like a companion, that was really helpful. But in Endgame I would only use him to get the Blade Brother Bonus. They deal no damage and the buffs are mostly not noticeable. The problem is: I don't want them to get so strong, that the captain is forced to activate them. The AI of heralds and archers just isn't good enough to use them in situations, were exact teamwork is required. My suggestion to make the Herald more interesting: I know this would be difficult to implement, but maybe allow the player to equip heralds by themselves through items from their inventory (off course without legendary items). So the player gets a more personal bond to his companion (I love sandbox games) and the herald would get more effective with better equipment. And please give heralds a mule in mounted combat.

I know you said 3 but there's really only one thing I want to talk about:

Hi, there RockX I feel as though we should get acquainted, my name is Fighting Withdrawal.

Fighting Withdrawal
10.2m Range
Tactical Skill
Radius: 10m
A fighting withdrawal can aid the Captain in living through a harsh battle. This skill lowers your threat to your opponents around you and greatly lowers threat gained from doing damage for a short while.
Cost: ... Power
Cooldown: 5m

I'm a pretty nifty skill! I make it so a captain doesn't have to worry about pulling aggro through heavy DPS! I have warg finding capabilities. I HAVE PEOPLE SKILLS!